tough call, if it was altered, it was done a long time ago. Very interesting, never seen anything like that.......
Looks like someone was practicing moving, removing letters. Perhaps to remove a mm. Or maybe some kind of counting machine damage. If man made, they are fairly good. Could make a 1922-d into a weak D fairly easily. Jim
Could be just me but there seems to be a larger than normal space between the 3 and the 8 of that coin on the date.
Hre's a look at the date. Your eye are more trained than mine about the spacing between the 3 and the 8.
Hey! That's not even Abe Lincoln!!! Seriously something wrong with the date. You see, I'm one of the few people who find this coin way more interesting than an MS-68 RD version of it. This is much more interesting to look at.
post mint damage A probability exists that it is post mint damage but we'll never know where the damage actually occurred. The damage may not have been intentional. If one coin's rim were jammed below IGWT and then forced upward, it would probably push all the letters IGWT upwards like you see them. The IGWT on the one coin would be chased and the rim of the second coin would probably also be damaged. I suggest that it is just one of a couple coins that got jammed in a counting machine. In 1938 there were also plenty of places within the mints machinery where a couple coins might accidentally be jammed together. There are the sliding doors on the old tote bins and feeder fingers in the presses etc. One coin might be jammed into another by accident inside the mint walls. Would that make it a mint error & how could you determine if it was done inside the mint? Very best regards, collect89
As Arte Johnson woud say - Veerrrry Interesting!! (obscure reference) As to the date - the spacing looks okay to me. At least it matches the 1938s I have. It's just that the weak side of the 8 gives the illusion that it's further away from the 3 than it really is. If you look close at the blowup you can see the distance between the 3 and 8 are consistent with the spacing of the 1 and 9 and the 9 and 3. The lettering in the motto is something else. If you look closely it appears that each letter was pushed up and to the left - except for the ST in TRUST. Those two letters seem to have been cut off cleanly at the top. It's possible that they, too, were damaged the same as the others with the pushed up metal having broken off. The question is what caused the damage. I don't think it's accidental. If it were there would almost certainly be marks in the field below each letter, and on the top of Lincoln's head. Also the direction of the metal flow suggests an upward and leftward rotational force. The suggestion that another coin may have jammed this one would that coin likely push in a single direction, with all of the letters being deformed straight in one direction, i.e., the left letters moved to the their upper right, the right letters moved to their upper left and the middle letters moved straight up. I think that desertgem is right in that someone did this deliberately, for whatever reason. That might explain why all of the letters are pushed in the same direction - the person doing it would do one letter at a time, working in a single direction and then rotating the coin to the next letter and working in the same direction again. The only flaw in this reasoning is why would he have stopped after having gone this far? It would be instructive to see a microscopic closeup of the area under the lettering. Perhaps billzack could give us some insight on the processes of doing something like this.
It's tough to tell from the photos, but the lettering almost appears melted. Maybe someone practicing some detailed metalwork.
Well whoever did had plently of skill and knowledge of metal/s. Nice discussion before reaching a conclusion but I'm still open for more info. Funny thing it just happens to be my birth year. Yeah, yeah, but it's only a number. Thanks for the education. The guy who did it was a 1st class twisted jerk. Luckily I have another 1938. I'm new as you can tell by my posts. I was always a late bloomer.
"In 1938 there were also plenty of places within the mints machinery where a couple coins might accidentally be jammed together. There are the sliding doors on the old tote bins and feeder fingers in the presses etc. One coin might be jammed into another by accident inside the mint walls. Would that make it a mint error & how could you determine if it was done inside the mint?" Actually, whether the damage happened in the mint building or not this would be "post mint damage". The term mint in this instance refers to the process of minting the coin not the physical building. once the coin leaves the die pair any damage that occurs to that coin is "post mint". this is definately post mint damage, most likely due to a counting or rolling machine early in its lifetime. the corresponding scratch marks that usually accompany such damage were then worn smooth over the years. If you look closely at the word GOD you will see that on each blob there is a line going from lower right to upper left. This was caused by the letters being pushed up as the coin rotated counterclockwise. Richard
Problem with that idea. In order for the rim to get down in below the lettering of the motto the the coin would have to be tipped which would put it below the letters at 12:00 but it would not be below them as you go clockwise and counterclockwise from that point. By the time you got to the I and the final T the rim would probably not be making contact with the letters at all. So the damaged motto would not be equally damaged like you see here. In order to do equal damage the rim would have to came in equally which would mean the coins would have to be parallel to each other. But in that case the devices of the two coins would keep the rim from being able to get below the motto. So this could not be simply caused by jamming two coins together.
